How to Train Your Ears: for Intervals - Understanding Music with Spock

Understanding Music: How to train your ears - what to listen for and how to. This is a basic tutorial on the 3 methods most widely used by musicians to help one recognize the various chromatic intervals within the octave. The three methods are: 1) the tension level of the interval in question (2) counting in scale steps (3) comparing the sound to a musical phrase. I go through all three methods with examples for all the intervals (see below).

After the video was done I realized I left out the tritone for tunes. Yikes!! Fortunately I talked about it with respect to dissonance level - and you can always count scale steps to "fa" and the have to raise it - or to "so" and then have to lower it. The are a number of Bartok tunes that use that interval prominently, but most people aren't really up on their Bartok. There is a Led Zeplin tune that uses the interval as the first chord (I will look that up and update this) and it is the outer two notes of the "Simpson Chord"; that first string chord that fades in at the beginning of the Simpsons Main Title theme.

This is part of a new series I am starting up called "Understanding Music". It's not the first episode (more like episode nine - but it was the first done because I have a number of Trebas students needing to know this stuff). A proper first video and explanation of the staff, notes and other basic concepts is in the works (at which time I will delete and update these last two paragraphs . . . so, for now . . . pencils lightbulb skinny bird cockle shell).

:)